R / ggplot2: Can't change scale limits with dates

Question

I'm trying to change the scale limits of a date-based x axis using scale_x_continuous, but ggplot2 won't accept my new limits.

Example::

mydata <- tibble::tibble(
    x = as.Date(c("2020-01-01", "2020-01-02", "2020-01-03", "2020-01-04", "2020-01-05")),
    y = 1:5
)

mydata_sub <- mydata[2:4,]

g <- ggplot2::ggplot(mydata_sub, ggplot2::aes(x = x, y = y)) +
    ggplot2::geom_point()

g <- g + ggplot2::scale_x_continuous(limits = c(min(mydata$x), max(mydata$x)))

print(g)

This leads to the error message:

Error in as.Date.numeric(value) : 'origin' must be supplied

Am I using the wrong scale_ function?

Answer 1

As your x-axis is in a date format, you need to use scale_x_date to manipule your x axis:

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mydata_sub, aes(x = x, y = y))+
  geom_point()+
  scale_x_date(limits = c(min(mydata$x), max(mydata$x)))